Reinstall System 7 from scratch

[Dkopsieker]

First off, I want to say I’m new to the 68k Mac scene.  I grew up on Apple II and company Macs, but never got into the hardware or setup of them...

I have a Mac classic II that will not boot from the hard drive.  I would like to reinstall system 7 from scratch it not sure where to start.  I have a few blank floppies, a windows machine, a MacBook Pro that’s about a year old and a USB floppy drive that I can connect to the Mac or the windows machine.

is there any way to accomplish this with that hardware?

thanks!!

 

[BadGoldEagle]

Welcome to the club. With what you have on hand, you should be able to write to floppies without a problem. But here's a few tips to kick things off...

General maintenance:

   - Capacitors on the logic board. They need replacing. Absence of sound is a typical symptom. You'll have to replace them or have someone replace them sooner or later. If not, it will quit working altogether in a few months/years. 

   - Battery. Those can leak and destroy the board. When you get it recapped, remove the battery or replace it. It's just there to keep track of time and a few parameters like 32 bit addressing, mouse and double click speed etc.

   - Hard drive. They are now more than 25 years old and some of them are just dead. If yours can't boot, it might be a goner...

With the 'bad news' out of the way, where's what to do:

   - Get a set of floppy images from macintoshgarden.org, macintoshrepository.org, or the Mac GUI. 7.1 should be plenty fast on the Classic II. 7.5 has more features but might be slower.

   - using macOS, you can write to floppy disks using the dd command.

from savagetaylor.com (but edited)

1. Open Terminal
   
2. type diskutil listand press return
   
3. You should see a list of all attached drives for your system with their names, you want the identifier of the USB floppy drive eg. something like /dev/disk2
   
4. Use dd with the correct input and output options, “sudo dd if=INPUTFILE of=OUTPUTFILE”:
   • 
     INPUTFILE = {identifier from step 3}, e.g. /dev/disk2.
     
   • OUTPUTFILE =  the location and name of the image you would like to create. (drop the file from the finder on the terminal window when you reach that point)
     
5. Type your password (because of sudo...)
   
6. Let it do its thing. Shouldn't take more than a minute or two.
   

With that done, try to boot the mac with the first floppy. It should be labeled Disk Tools or Install me first. Try to reformat the hard drive using Apple HD SC Setup. If it succeeds, proceed with the  install, and follow the instructions. 

Good luck!

 

[Dkopsieker]

Thanks!!   I already got the analog board recapped and just send the logic board to be cleaned, capped and battery replaced.  As soon as it’s back I’ll try those instructions. 

 

[Dkopsieker]

Welcome to the club. With what you have on hand, you should be able to write to floppies without a problem. But here's a few tips to kick things off...

General maintenance:

   - Capacitors on the logic board. They need replacing. Absence of sound is a typical symptom. You'll have to replace them or have someone replace them sooner or later. If not, it will quit working altogether in a few months/years. 

   - Battery. Those can leak and destroy the board. When you get it recapped, remove the battery or replace it. It's just there to keep track of time and a few parameters like 32 bit addressing, mouse and double click speed etc.

   - Hard drive. They are now more than 25 years old and some of them are just dead. If yours can't boot, it might be a goner...

With the 'bad news' out of the way, where's what to do:

   - Get a set of floppy images from macintoshgarden.org, macintoshrepository.org, or the Mac GUI. 7.1 should be plenty fast on the Classic II. 7.5 has more features but might be slower.

   - using macOS, you can write to floppy disks using the dd command.

from savagetaylor.com (but edited)

With that done, try to boot the mac with the first floppy. It should be labeled Disk Tools or Install me first. Try to reformat the hard drive using Apple HD SC Setup. If it succeeds, proceed with the  install, and follow the instructions. 

Good luck!

Wait, it looks like those instructions are to create an image from a floppy, not write an image to one... is that correct?

 

[BadGoldEagle]

That’s a typo in the guide... This is what I used to set up a scsi2sd hard drive emulator. I wrote a 1gb image to an sd card using this tutorial. Writing a 1.44mb image to a floppy is the same process.

Be careful to get select the correct drive identifier or you might wipe your hard drive!

 

[Dog Cow]

Wait, it looks like those instructions are to create an image from a floppy, not write an image to one... is that correct?

On the contrary, the quoted instructions which involve the use of the dd command are indeed to write a block disk image back to a physical floppy disk.

 

[Dkopsieker]

Ok. I got the logic board back and it looks extremely clean and the caps all look great. It fires up fine and I figured out how to write the floppy images and got it to boot the system 7 boot disk, but I think my hard drive is fried.  It doesn’t detect it at all.  Also, the computer makes no sound at boot up.  What could that be? Thanks!

 

[davidg5678]

Also, the computer makes no sound at boot up.

Just in case you have not already checked --Have you verified that the speaker was plugged in after the board was reinstalled?

Usually, getting the motherboard recapped (like you already did) fixes this sort of issue, although it is certainly possible something is still damaged in the circuitry.

 

[BadGoldEagle]

There’s no speaker connector on the classic II, just like the Plus it’s integrated in the main LB connector. 

Is sound working after boot up? You can check this with a system 6.0.8L (make sure there’s an L!) boot disk by navigating to the sounds control panel and adjusting the volume from there. I’m not sure system 7 lets you do that from an install floppy.

If you don’t get anything from the built-in speaker, try the headphone jack. 

Also, you could ask the person who recapped it if sound was working on their end... could be an analog board issue...

For the hard drive, I suggest creating a system 7 disk tools disk and a lido 7.5.6 disk. Lido is great for formatting or diagnosing if there’s an issue with the scsi bus or not. It won’t test the whole thing but you should be able to see if the problem is logic board related or hard drive related.